


The Tower

by JoCarthage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2014 verse, Future Castiel, Future Dean Winchester, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a tower in which a child-survivor of the Fall and his friend play. It doesn't exist and has never existed, but will one day save one of their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tower

There was a sky scraper at the edge of Jimmy's memory that he climbed whenever he wasn't thinking about anything else. It was golden and brazen and black as a chemical cloud rolling up from the Capitol-wasteland. It was sad when the wind whipped along its empty corridors and balconies: the tower had been empty for many years.

Jimmy never climbed the outside of the tower--rebar too tall and straight for his small hands to get around, but he always found a way in. Some afternoons, when the pomegranate light roasted his moms' vegetables in the joint-garden, he would walk to the remaindered park and imagine his tower. He would see its flights of crumbling stairs and open rooms, hungry for the meagre light of his cracked-plastic flashlight. He would pull on his mittens and go exploring, past empty desks broken to pieces by monster hands and chairs whittled down to dust by crawling diggers. He would smell the old smell of abandoned paper and hear the crunch of motherboards beneath his feet.

Sometimes he would crawl into the ceiling, creeping from pipe to worn-out pipe, walking his way up walls with his back and his legs. Sometimes he would fall but a cushion of air would catch him lightly and set him back on his feet.

Sometimes Jimmy would die, or almost die, but save himself.

Jimmy was alone in his tower, until the day he met Ben.

Ben was curly-haired and muddy, in Ms Kinneston's 5th grade class. His overalls were nearly white with wear and his glasses always crooked and thrice repaired. They ate lunch together the first day Ben came to their section of the city-island. He and his mother had lived in the barrios across the wasted midtown. They'd played in the writhing creepers of the old park, and Ben told stories of buildings you could spin if you pushed them hard enough, open on the sides and full of animals with poles through their bodies.

"Not _real_  animals," Ben assured his semi-circular playground audience. "The plastic kind, with fancy saddles and open mouths."

Ms Kinneston called the open-animal-building a "carousel" and said they'd been common and full of light and music without people before the Fall. Jimmy had never heard music without people, music from a box; but like Ben, he'd been born after the Fall and there were many things he did not know.

Ben had an older sister, Jill. Jill had been a very little girl in the last days of the old Republic, before distance and open spaces ate the last of the unified government. She was distant, always working on a new and different way to get places. She talked about cellphones and computers and even browsers into the internet. Jimmy thought they sounded like a million kinds of fun, but even without light-in-wires from power-plants he and Ben could still make up their own stories.

It was winter before Jimmy told Ben about his sky-scraper and the pink-budded bushes were pushing full spring onto the broken sidewalks on their walk home before he invited him in.

"But how can I go there?" asked Ben. "If it's in your mind?"

Jimmy thought. "Well, the skyscraper won't be exactly the same between us. But I can tell you what mine looks like, and we'll play there sometimes and we can play in yours other times."

And so Jimmy described it: black and gold outside and cavernous rooms and tight crawlspaces and flimsy ceiling tiles. He took him on some of his regular adventures--to cafe in the basement, full of crooked and looming silver pots and smashed glass on the floor. He set aside a long summer day to walk Ben all the way up into the rafters, into the second-to-the-top floor of the building where they looked out over the ravaged remains of the city which had died with the name New York. They never went to the very top, the very final roof deck. Jimmy wouldn't tell him why, except that it was secret and it was protected.

"What can I see?" Ben asked, eyes tightly closed, sitting with his back against his Dad's cherry tree behind the house they shared with the Smothers and the Fitzpatricks and the Alis. Jimmy looked at him, smiling, then turned to put his back against the tree again, their shoulders tight together. Jimmy shut his eyes.

"Ok: On the left, way down in the corner you can see smalltown,"

"Can I see us?"

"Probably not--we're waaaaay too far away. Also, we're under this tree." 

"Ok. What else?" Ben said, voice excited.

Jimmy thought about the map, the old one with the tunnels laid out in vein bright colors under the city blocks. "To the left you can almost see the ocean, and you can definitely see the ships." He told him.

"I can see mother liberty!" Ben said, sneaking his eyes open to check for Jimmy's approval. Jimmy kept his eyes shut but nodded.

"Yep. And the old park and--there, there, a shooting star!"

"Make a wish." Both boys scrunched their faces up tight, and made their wishes known to the star.

The tree rustled and behind them Jimmy heard a cherry drop. They would have to climb up into them and pick what they could before the wind and the squirrels took the rest. He felt the warm sun and the smiling friend beside them and knew what he wished for.

\--

Ben and his family stayed in the smalltown. They'd planned to move on, move West, where they'd heard the land was cleaner and the sky brighter. But Ben's Mom found a job teaching in their school and Ben's Dad started trading time caring for the fruit trees and gardens in smalltown with pieces of their produce. Ben and Jimmy grew up (in Ben's case up-and-up-and-up-and-UP) and worked with each other on most of their major projects in school. Ben was really good at Math and Jimmy liked playing with fruit and making new food for the group. Jill left to go south to work on the rice fields, trying to get more out of them for the few people left after the Fall. Jimmy's Mom left for a while too, going to the north to learn how to manager water better from a township up there.

Ben and Jimmy thrived together.

One day, Jill came back and they were 18 and she was a full grown-up. She visited the school, telling them what she'd learned. Jimmy and Ben were taking half-days, teaching the littler kids in the afternoons and taking their own classes in the mornings. She came to their classroom after lunch, where they were laying out the folded-up quilts for nap-time. She stood watching them and asked:

"So, when's the prom?"

Jimmy glanced at Ben and asked "The what?"

Jill sighed, "The prom, dum-dum. The dance? For the end of your time in school?"

"Uh," said Ben, "I don't think we have one."

"But you've _got_  to have a prom." Jill said, staring at them before stalking off.

And so Jimmy and Ben's class, which was only a dozen kids, spent a day walking across the island to invite everyone else in their last year to the prom. They held it in one of the big open spaces which would keep warm from bodies but not take too much trouble to light. Jill instructed them on every step--apparently, where she'd been for the last few years had been big into proms.

Ben and Jimmy went to the prom together, of course. They'd long since begun turning their afternoon hang-outs into hang-out-and-cuddles. Dating wasn't really different than being best friends, except that they had to talk about their feelings a little more and they got to touch each other a little more.

Jimmy had no idea what prom had been like before the Fall, but theirs was by firelight, with music played on drums and guitars and fiddles. They swayed to the slow songs and jumped around to the big ones, but most of the time they sat around the sides and drank fruit juice combinations Ben's Dad had made and played cards and told stories about growing up in smalltown for the kids from other places on the city-island. When the musicians started spending more time arguing about the next song in the set than playing and most of the fruit juice which was left over was apple-and-lime, Ben tapped Jimmy on the shoulder and said:

"Hey, want to go out to the cherry tree?"

Ben's eyes got big but he smiled and nodded. They walked out, filling the spaces between each other's fingers and humming strands of the night's tunes together.

They settled under their old tree, the warm moonlight reflecting off the white walls of Ben's family's house and lighting them softly.

"Where do you think our tower came from?" Ben asked. He'd asked this before, but Jimmy never knew the answer.

"I guess it's always been in my head," he said, as always.

"In both of our heads for a long time now." Ben nodded, agreeing.

"You know," Ben said, pausing and taking a deep breath before turning into Jimmy and talking to his shoulder, "Iwasthinkingofheadingacrosstheseatofindtheoldland."

Jimmy froze, shoulders rusted tight. His mind flashed through every language class they'd taken together, Ben excelling and Jimmy doodling; cursing every hand-drawn or carefully scrounged map he'd given Ben for his birthdays; every story Ben had told Jimmy about the Old Land, the land where the buildings were still bright with electricity and the skies still clear of fallout.

Jimmy said: "You know I can't go." He was cold and Ben's heat wasn't helping. He couldn't get enough air and was shivering from cold and sweating from heat.

"It would only be for a year," Ben tried, but Jimmy interrupted him:

"You don't _know_  that. You don't know what--there could be demons out there, or worse, angels."

Ben's face was terrible with guilt, all crumpled and for a moment Jimmy wanted to relent, to tell him it was ok. _But it's not ok_.

The Fall had left most of them stranded in their human bodies without powers but with significant malice. Most of the gangs of outlaws who attacked smaller towns were full of the remainders of the demons or their disturbed hosts. No one Ben or Jimmy knew had seen an angel since the Fall, but the stories Ben's Dad and Jimmy's Moms told spoke of creatures without compassion or feelings; who leveled entire towns of humans to kill one demon. But occasionally a lone traveler who claimed to have come from across the great salt sea from the old land would mention a man who walked across countries like Ben or Jimmy would walk across a street, who killed demons with a bright light from his hands, whose voice could strip the skin from your brain.

That traveler had been a liar, Jimmy's Mom had said after she frog-marched him out of town. There was no way a man could know an angel had stepped onto his street from a street 1000 miles away, and no way for anyone to live to tell after if they'd seen or heard an angel kill. But everyone agreed: if there were demons or angels left in the world, they were in the old land and had best stay there.

"I know you can't. You promised Ms Kinneston." Jimmy had promised. After their teacher had gotten sick, she spent her last few months teaching him, getting him ready to run her class. No matter how careful a survivor was, the things in the black clouds and the water that rained out of them and stung where it hit and could get anyone. Most of the adults got sick eventually, and nearly no one made it to their fourth decade.

"I just _need_ to know, you know?" Jimmy wanted to be surly, to tell him _No, I don't know. I don't understand why you need this, why I'm not enough_. But he loved him and since the Fall that word meant sacrifice more than anything else.

He took a bigger breath than his tight chest could take, then another, and as his head spun from the sudden increase in oxygen, he said: "Ok."

Ben tucked his head in closer: "I won't have to leave for a day, or so," Jimmy's body clenched, heart crushed under a brick, but he understood: the seas were dangerous enough in the summer but would be impossible in the winter. He'd learned in school about radio and radar and when the great nations had paid sailors to criss-cross seas looking for lost boats. For three weeks one summer he'd fallen in love with the idea of a light-house, and of the kind of man who would spend a life standing and staring into the distance and keeping a flame alive to guide strangers home. Then he'd realized he liked people too much to be left alone all his days, and gravitated back towards teaching. He held Ben closer and breathed him in.

Jimmy started when he heard a crowd of people laughing on the sidewalk in front of the house and looked up at the stars. He saw it was late, later than he'd promised his family he'd be back home. He wriggled a little closer to Ben, seeking once more the comfort of his closeness. A feeling he'd felt before but had always pushed to later welled up in him and he turned and found his face inches from Ben's. Ben's eyes were wide and scared and wanting. Jimmy pushed past those last few inches and pressed his mouth to Ben's. Their noses crammed against each other, and they both winced and twisted their heads for a more comfortable angle, but nothing could keep their lips apart. Jimmy was shocked when he felt Ben's tongue on his lips but then opened his mouth with a brief moan.

What had started out exploratory was suddenly heavy and hot in his stomach and he rolled all the way over, straddling Ben's leg and resting his hand on his chest. Ben's arms wrapped around him, pulling him in closer until he was laying on him, in his lap. He pushed his hand more firmly against his friend's chest, feeling its rise-and-fall as he breathed and thumb resting just under the swell of his chest. Ben made a small, open sound and Jimmy slid his hand down, tucking it under his shirt and gasping at the feel of his slightly cool skin against his palm. He was just thinking of pressing down, exploring the space between Ben's hips and his jeans, when he heard his name being called--Ben's Mom.

Ben jerked and Jimmy pulled back, the further he got from Ben's skin the colder he felt and the more he remembered this would be their last night together for what might be months or years. _Or forever_ , a treacherous gaping hole in his mind whispered. He rushed back in for another kiss, banging his forehead off of Ben's and digging his hand into the bark behind his head, willing him to feel him, to remember him. Then he pulled back, crouching and holding out a hand for a stunned-faced Ben. Jimmy's arm over Ben's shoulders and fingers clutched tightly, they walked to the sound of the laughing search party.

The next few days were a whirl of planning and Jimmy only let the deep grief which was slowly freezing his insides touch him in the smaller ways--the tension in his hand when he held it out to Ben, the way he let himself touch Ben in a way he never had before, the selfish way he insisted Ben spend all of his free time with him, rather than his family. 

When Ben left it was with a group of hard women and men, folks who'd left their towns and families and past identities long before the Fall and had nothing to tie them to what was left of their shared homeland. They rode a massive empty container ship painted in peeling strips of blue paint which had been used in better days to move shoddy furniture from one contingent to the other. They took enough crew to run the ship and nothing extra. Jimmy stood at the dock and watched the boat pull away, leaving a dozen of its listing sisters in shallow water of the Hudson. He could still feel Ben's arms around him from one last hug, still smell him on the shirt of his he'd stolen and worn under his flannel.

He closed his eyes, and imagined their tower, but all he could see was fog. All he could hear was the wind as it whistled through his hallways, cutting through his crawl-spaces and yanking his hair as he stood on its second-to-the-top observation deck, alone. 

\--

 _Cas touches Dean's cold skin gently, one last time before laying down the torch. Lucifer hadn't known that Dean's body had held the last repository of Grace on earth, now the angels in their madness had closed off the gates of Heaven to all comers. He hadn't known, though he should have, with Sam's memories, that Dean would have brought Cas with him to his final end_  

_And so Cas, fully prepared to die in Dean's suicide rush, had awoken to his full angelic abilities in the middle of a gut-punch from a ravaged-faced Croat. He'd flashed out for a moment, unable to remember how to control his grace, and luckily all of the living zombies which had been piling onto the corpses of his comrades were blinded and burnt out._

_Castiel was the only survivor of that last rush and when he'd walked out to find Lucifer standing over Dean's body he'd been completely prepared to lose that designation. He had wanted nothing more than to die beside Dean, had wanted nothing more than that for a very long time._

_But then he looked into Lucifer's eyes and he knew: there was nothing of angel left in his brother. He played at brightness, but it was all show: when the gates of heaven had been locked, and the lines of worthy souls started to fill the interstitial moments between all the atoms in the universe and the angels were silent to their pleas, Lucifer had lost what he'd known of heaven. In his brother's eyes all Castiel could see past his rage and hurt and hate was a particularly stuck-up demon, and so when he'd strode over to him--every moment expecting to be struck down where he moved--he did not expect the blinding light of his grace to so thoroughly eviscerate the former Morningstar._

_Lucifer died at Castiel's hands and Castiel could not care less. Before his brother's body had settled on the ground Cas was at Dean's side, shoving his grace into the listless corpse, daring God to stop him from initiating an unapproved resurrection._

_But nothing happened. Dean flopped horribly, his broken neck lolling and his face coldly peaceful in a way it hadn't been since before the Fall, before Castiel had met him in person. The sounds coming out of Castiel's mouth were nothing short of animal, and without anyone to stop him he spent hours rocking and keening over the body of his friend and love and savior and ward. Castiel burned Dean's body, and those of their fallen comrades, but left the Croats  to rot where they lay._

_He had walked near all the way to their trucks without daring to touch Sam's corpse, too furious for thoughts, but he could hear Dean scolding him, back when they had space for mourning and lightness. He returned to the stinking rose garden to burn and bury the body of the devil, the demon who had killed his Dean and who Dean had loved more than anyone. He was slower, less careful, and he shielded his skin from the corpse's with the edges of his jacket when he shifted Sam's body onto the pyre._

_Castiel had no need for sleep now and no reason to tempt his human propensity to nightmares to follow him into his new-found angelhood. Sam burnt to a crisp, he walked back out again, over the tattered grass and the fallen Croats. He stopped when he objectively knew he could no longer smell smoke, though it surrounded him and was eating into his pores. He took a choking breath of the night air and thought about what to do._

_He had no place back at the camp now. He could feel the taint of demons slipping back to Hell now their lynchpin was no more. He could hear the moaning of the souls of their hosts, too damaged to ever live in the world as anything but psychopaths. He thought of all of the places Dean had drunkenly promised they would go after he killed the Devil--never "killed Sam," even drunk Dean couldn't use his brother's name to describe Lucifer, but "killed the Devil," he managed. The Grand Canyon, Niagra Falls, Old Faithful. Castiel's heart dug deader into his chest and he took off, stretching his wings, swirling himself off the American continent._

_The sweeps of his renewed grace cascaded off his wings, soothing some of the broken souls, putting some Croats to right. He was spending energy like he never expected to live again and part of him knew if he fell from the sky he'd flare out like an unnamed star. He would welcome that, he thought, when again Dean's voice minded into his space. He remembered Dean's righteous fury on his behalf at the angels when their departure began slowly sapping Cas's strength. He remembers the pure horror when they all realized that souls were not longer getting to the afterlife._

_This thought stopped Cas cold, and he nearly let himself drop into the great salt sea. Dean wasn't in Heaven. Dean wasn't in Hell. Dean was in line, waiting in the carefully-minded spaces the Reapers were holding, abiding until the angels unlocked the gates of Heaven or the demons organized a new King._

_Even if he died, if he gave up this mortal frame and plane, Castiel would never see Dean as long as the angels stayed away._

_He felt a grating in his soul, a slow throb as his Grace's heart started beating, pushing certainty into his veins: he needed to rise against the demons, give the angels a reason to come back._

_He flew east and east and east until the old country rose before him._

\--

Ben just wanted to say goodbye to Jimmy before he died. There was no way he was making it out of London alive--he'd found the survivors he was looking for, alright, but they'd all been possessed. Something had happened, something from the Fall which had cleansed North and South America of demons but had left Europe untouched. He had to guess it was all of Europe, but since his ship had grounded itself at the base of a nearly unscalable cliff on the island which had been called Ireland he hadn't gotten any further east than the Thames. 

His shipmates had turned mercenary for a human warlord, and he'd followed along, using his skill with languages to keep the group together. He'd been issued a gun but had left it in the hands of a single mother in a shack-town they'd passed: he had no place in his heart for murder.

That could not be said of the demons storming their building, the last place on this block which they did not fully control. They were led by a madman named Alistair, a man whose laugh and mincing steps slipped icy daggers between Ben's ribs. He'd heard his traveling companions die, one by one, and he knew when the last spasm of gunfire stopped with a choked scream the demons had gotten the last ones. He was hiding in the ceiling, dusty and shaking and scraped, tucked up where a rafter hit a wall on a story too high to jump down from. He heard the high cackling laughs of the demons as they searched the building for survivors.

He wished he'd said goodbye to Jimmy properly, one last time.

Just as Ben was sure he'd heard footsteps enter his floor from the stairwell, the laughing stopped. There was a muffled conversation, and a voice growled something, deeper than Jimmy had heard since his father's gruff: "Be safe. 

He heard a shout of defiance and then a bright light began to build. Ben crouched further into himself and scrunched his eyes shut, and he could almost count his eyelid-veins as the brightness got worse and worse. When he would have screamed if his throat had long since stopped allowing loud sounds out it began to dim again. He heard footsteps and a sweeping sound, a pinching in his back made him straighten and a noise like a gasp popped out of him. He stifled it, but it was too late. The footsteps came nearer.

"You are not a demon." A voice as low as sin graveled at him.

Ben tried to creep back even further while peering through a space between the ceiling tiles 

"I will not harm you." The voice said. Ben was not particularly convinced. He heard a sigh, and suddenly as breathing there was another person crouched in his crawlspace, as dirty as he is but face bright, questioning.

"You have nothing to fear from me, human." Ben couldn't get any farther away but he closed his eyes. He felt a hand find his shoulder and--he was healed. The scrapes on his hands from pulling himself over rough metal, the ache from where he'd fractured his wrist during a squall on the trip over, even his thirst evened out. He opened his eyes with a gasp:

"You're an angel."

"Yes."

"Can you take me home?" Ben said, unthinking and unhesitating 

The angel cocked his head and said: "Where is 'home'?"

"Old New York city, or, well," the angel's face had darkened considerably and Ben felt a current of fear rip down his spine again, "Really, anywhere Jimmy is."

The angel peered into his face, like he was looking through a smuddy glass into a world he didn't understand.

"Who is your 'Jimmy'?" He asked, voice still rough.

"He's my," Ben gulped, "My other piece."

The angel nodded slowly, face considering. "I understand," and there was a depth to his eyes Ben hadn't seen before, a shining. "But I cannot return you to him. He must wait," the angel looked away, "I cannot, I cannot return to your homeland."

"Ok." Ben said, starting to shake from shock. The angel looked him over once.

"I can protect you until you can find your half again." He reached out with his other hand, "Come with me."

Ben was about to object when he found himself huddled against the bole of a huge shade tree as the angel straightened. There was a fine mist, an almost-rain falling down through the green and dimming light of the evening. He sat on dirt which might once have been grass and heard a silence he hadn't had ping through him since he left the cherry tree.

"I am Castiel. I am an angel of the Lord. I will bring Heaven back." Castiel looked at Ben and Ben wondered what he wanted from him. An affirmation? An obescence? A smile? What he got was Ben throwing up on his shoes, since that flight had upset what little equilibrium Ben had left. Castiel waited until he was finished and hoisted him to his feet.

"We must find somewhere for you to rest," He said as he began frog-marching Ben through the former park. Ben would have objected, but he kept stumbling from weariness. They came to a great, squatting stone building. They walked down broad and steep steps. With a hand pressed to a chained door Castiel let them into what looked to have been a meeting chamber. He motioned to the floor and then said,

"We have a night of waiting before we can hunt again. Sleep, if you can. I will keep watch."

Ben watched in the dimness as Castiel walked to the still open door, the only source of light what could creep around his stilling figure. Ben watched his hand come up to his chest, thumb rubbing over and over against a pendant, lips moving and face closed. Ben slept.

\--

"Wake up." Castiel's voice was a harsh whisper and Ben jolted into consciousness. For a moment his arm felt heavy, like Jimmy had been laying on it in their shared sleep in his dream, but he shook it off.

"Something is wrong." Castiel said. Ben couldn't see the angel, could only hear him and sense his close and crouching presence.

"What?" He whispered.

"I can feel--I," the angel's voice was shaking, "The angels are returning. There is to be a great battle here. The last battle. I can hear them all."

"Last before what?" Ben said. More angels could not possibly be a good thing, though only slightly better than more demons.

"They believe they are fulfilling the apocalypse. I cannot--" Ben heard a sudden shift, like a wince in the angel's body, "I cannot understand them, they do not speak in measured tones." His breath jerked, "They are screaming."

Ben heard a whoosh and knew the angel had left. He listened carefully, and had only begun to open the door into the brightening dawn when a flapping sound surrounded him and the angel returned.

His face was terrible. "What's the matter?" Ben said, dreading the answer.

"They are mad. Angels were never meant to distance themselves from those they served. They can no longer distinguish between humans and demons, they are," the angel hesitated, "killing everything."

Ben's hand shot out, without his instruction, gripping the angel's arm: "Jimmy." He said, desperately.

"They are only in this city for the moment. I believe they were drawn to my grace, though none of them know the taste of it anymore. There are nearly no humans left without demons in them in this city, so I will try to contain them here until they adjust."

"But what about me?" Ben asked,

Castiel paused, evaluating. Ben straightened his shoulders under his unwavering gaze and tugged at his crooked shirt. Castiel's shoulders slumped.

"I did commit myself to your safety. Come: we will find a place for you."

Castiel held out two fingers to Ben's head and a blink later they were at the foot of towering buildings, rotted benches scattered across the sidewalk and the hulking wreckage of a bus blocking his view of the street. Castiel was striding towards sunrise and Ben hurried to catch up with him. The sounds of battle were few and harsh: screams, crashes, flashes of light dominated the dawning sky. Castiel's shoulders hunched a little more with each resulting flash and bang but he kept moving forward with purpose.

They didn't see any demons--the gangs had been fearsome but few in Ben's few days in the city, but he would have expected Castiel's grace to be more of a lure. Ben's vision was beginning to open up, the adrenaline-driven tunnel-view broadening to include more of the street when Castiel stumbled, his hand slamming into the broken pavement at their feet. Ben rushed forward, hand hovering over the angel's shoulder.

The angel's hands were clenched to his ears and his shoulders a geometry of pain.

"Castiel?" The angel's shoulders hunched further then with a visible effort he removed them, wincing in spurts.

"They're screaming overhead; my brothers are flying and forgetting the sun's heat burns. They've forgotten the earth and all its dimensions."

Ben's voice shook: "Do you--do you need to go to them?" Castiel's face crumbled a little and then hardened again 

"They would not accept me. They cannot see humanity without seeing its demonic taint. And I, I am too human for them yet." Castiel glanced quickly into his eyes before scrunching his closed again in pain: "I took something of humanity into myself for Dean--" he paused a moment, "for my other piece. Long before the Fall."

Castiel's hands were off his ears but he did not seem ready to rise again. Ben looked around, seeking sanctuary. And then he stopped, eyes full of shock. There, between two smoke-streaked and hulking burnt-out office tower it soared up and up and up.

It was Jimmy's tower. Bright and gold and black and sooty, carved out on the inside, steep sides and doors that would never open at the first push. Ben gripped Castiel's shoulder and hauled him upright:

"There." He said, pointing. 

Castiel glanced that way but shook his head, "We must get further out from the fighting; they could be here any minute."

"No." Ben said, completely certain for the first time since he stepped off the pier. "We will be safe there."

Castiel hunched in on himself again, and Ben supported some of his weight as they stumbled towards the tall and surprisingly unbroken glass doors. The instant before Ben's hand reached out for the great brass handle Castiel's slapped it down and away.

"This is not an ordinary building," he guttered. "It is--"

He squinted, straightening and stepping back. He stepped back another stride, and another yet.

His head whipped around, fixing Ben with what would have been a terrifying stare if Ben had any terror left to allocate. 

"How can you see this?" He demanded, voice cold and body shifting into a fighting stance, hands raised as weapons

Ben raised his palms, speaking faster than clearly: "It's Jimmy's tower. It's, a, a place we used to play as children," the angel's face tilted strangely to the side, "In our minds," Ben clarified. "We played games and made up stories here in our minds; it has always been our safe place."

"And have you ever been here, touched this building outside of your minds?"

"No; I thought it was just something Jimmy made up. He's," Ben's face softened, "He's creative like that."

Castiel nodded, squinting again at the great and shining tower.

"It is safe there, if you can enter." He paused and looked at Ben again. "Try the door."

Ben turned, ready to follow any order which kept the angel happy with him. "It probably won't work," he said as he reached his hand out, "The front door never opens on the first try." 

But it did, opening slowly with a hum. Ben knew this should frighten him, but he wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in the familiarity of their tower. He strode through and glanced back, ready for Castiel to follow him. The angel was watching him curiously, but follow he did.

They stepped through the lobby. It was not broken as it had always been in Jimmy's shared dream: the floors were polished marble in an amber-brown, the windows clear and bright. 

"We should take the stairs," Castiel said, stepping around the side of the lobby, skirting the middle as they walked towards the emergency staircase.

"What did you mean, this is not an ordinary building?" Ben asked, curiosity accosting him at the worst of times. They ran up the first flight of stairs and as Jimmy pushed open another fire-door Castiel said:

"It is not a building at all," pushing open the next fire door and slipping through.

"What does that mean?" Ben asked.

"It is--" Castiel flinched, clutching the bannister and ducking his head down. Ben gripped his shoulder again and nudged him forwards, up the stairs. 

"It is a manifestation of waiting souls. The Reapers have been holding them in stasis since the gates of Heaven were locked. They must have decided to organize them in some fashion--each soul serving a constructive function while they wait for entrance into their afterlives."

"These Reapers made a building out of people?" Ben asked, horrified and a little out of breath. They had made it to the 4th floor and he knew they had dozens left to go.

"No," said Castiel. He cocked his head: "Yes. A soul is energy and memory and drive. They cannot be kept still without considerable effort. By shaping them into a shape, a human shape, the Reapers expend less energy containing them." Castiel looked thoughtful, "There are probably hundreds, thousands of these creations and it is unsurprising that your Jimmy would see this one so vividly, as it is fashioned with the best pieces of the buildings of his home city." They were walking again, the stairs burning Ben's legs and his breathing harsh in his ears.

"I cannot see all of the souls here, but I expect some who knew his mother or yours make up the steps upon which we climb. Come." Castiel continued up the stairs, keeping his eye fixed on the corner between the real-feeling stair and the grey-painted wall. His throat constricted and his chest cramped but he kept going. Castiel never paused or slowed but kept steadily rising up and up and up. Ben closed his eyes as his feet found a rhythm and his chest stitches eased. He could slip his mind into feeling Jimmy's arm around his shoulders, Jimmy's neck under his palm, Jimmy's thigh pressed tight against his as they sat together at the lunch tables.

He focused on the details: the rough mud on Jimmy's garden jeans, his lightly curling hair, his paint-flecked shirt after a day painting the siding on the school building obnoxious colors. He fell into the details and his feet rose and rose and rose. He imagined describing this adventure to Jimmy and hearing his laugh.

"We're here." Castiel's growl jerked him back. 

And they were. The second-to-the-top floor of the building, with the wind raising into a howl around Ben's ears and his face numbing with its freezing chill. Ben had to keep moving and wandered forward. Castiel yanked him back away from the edge--he'd drifted forward to see if the view was what Jimmy had always described--and pinned his shoulders against the cold metal of the ladder to the final floor of the tower as he shook from the exertion of the climb. Ben started to shiver and shake, the icy wall at his back leaching the last of his strength. Castiel looked him up and down and then began to shrug out of his trench coat. He maneuvered Ben's arms into its sleeves and then buttoned it fully, awkwardly pulling the collar up around his ears. Castiel stared at him until Ben's shivers began to even out and then he nodded and stepped back,

As he turned away, Ben started forward, hand outstretched--"Wait!"

Castiel didn't turn around; he looked strangely bare without his coat and eons more dangerous. He tilted his head.

"I must go. I may yet be able to end this carnage." Perhaps seeing Ben's panicked face, "I will return for you and protect you. If I cannot change the course of the battle by nightfall, I will not be able to do it in time. In that case, I will return to return you to your Jimmy."

Ben nodded and huddled back against the ladder, tucking himself more tightly into Castiel's jacket. He looked up, hoping perhaps for one more comforting word, but the angel was gone.

\--

The sounds of battle got steadily louder and closer as the sun curved over the sky. Around mid-day, Ben watched dozens of streaks of light chase a single, awkward light across the sky, swirling and cornering it, though it never let them catch it. In the late afternoon, the smoke rising out of the ruins of the burning city finally rose high enough to begin to choke the air in occasional wafts. He considered calling out for Castiel, but it had been hours since he'd seen that single, stubborn light and he was afraid of who might hear him. The lights began to swoop closer to his building, blasting holes in the lower-lying structures but never touching it. Ben closed his eyes and tried to think of cherry picking in the spring but the stench of war filled Castiel's jacket and his mouth.

When the sun began to hide behind the bulk of the tallest buildings in what remained of London's skyline, Jimmy's tower began to shake. Through the haze and the dimming light, Ben could see balls of light whirling around the base. Echoing up through the shattered streets, he heard mad wailing and whistling, pops and whirrs. The smoke was getting thicker, and a coughing fit took him dangerously close to the unprotected edge. He threw himself back, committed to huddling and waiting for the last glimpses of light to disappear when he noticed a strange heat coming through the soles of his boots.

He winced at it, and laid his palm down on the metal flooring, yanking it back when it singed him. He inched towards the door, sure of what he would see in the stairway: fire. Blue-edged, unnaturally bright and cleaner-burning and silent as quickening, but fire that would burn him as dead as the fall from Jimmy's tower would.

"Castiel!" He shouted. "Castiel!" Nothing. He tried again, praying with his mind as he shouted his voice horse. "Castiel! Cas! You promised. You promised me!"

Nothing. Whether he was hurt or busy or dead Ben didn't know, but he could no more help the angel than the angel could help him now. The heat coming through his boots was now scalding, and the random light was coalescing into a violent, throbbing mass in a column encircling the tower. He glanced around the platform, looking for--what? A rope? Nothing long enough to take him to the ground. A pair of wings? Nothing.

The ladder glinted through the smoke and Ben's palms found its metal strangely cool. He hoisted himself up, yanking Castiel's sleeves up to his elbows and pulling himself through the hole, to the final roof to which he'd never gone in his imaginings with Jimmy. The ladder peaked out at the level of the top roof, so Ben had to lever himself over the lip, landing in a sprawling heap and rolling until--

He knocked into something solid. It was--a car tire? Some of the smoke had followed Ben through the hole, but this top deck was still and cool and clear. And sitting in the middle of the gleaming central platform was a hulking black American car.

It shone with a polish Ben had never seen on the cars back home. He'd seen the pinging shine in some old car magazines they'd used to collage in the nursery school, but this car bellowed that it was loved. He could have sworn when he rolled into it both doors had been tightly closed. Now he looked again and one was slightly ajar.

He slid in to the passenger seat, grimacing as his dirty boots scuffed the perfectly preserved floor mats.

Settled-in, he looked up and through the front window he could see the end coming.

That one star, that one swirling ball of stubborn energy whirled up the outside of Jimmy's tower, and Ben tensed, ready for a teleport. It paused, hovering over the final platform and--for just a moment--Ben would have sworn it had frozen entirely before then a long line of light came arcing down to pass over the hood of the car. After the caress it dove into the great column of chaotic energy. At the core of the sky mass of angel power was a dark red blot around which all of the other lights swirled. A leader perhaps? The Castiel-blob flew right into it and Ben hid his eyes, afraid he was watching the death of an angel.

And then--nothing. The red light did not explode or vanish but the mass ceased seething. The other light continued to swirl, but spits of the red shot out and corralled it into something resembling an order. If he squinted, Ben could see a tiny glint in the center, zipping around and corralling the cloud. Then the entire mass began to move away from him, zipping to different parts of the city. It dove to the street level, then back up. Then down, then up. Ben realized it was gushing through human and demon camps, sometimes pulling a screaming specimen up only to place him or her atop a particularly tall building.

Castiel seems to be retraining the angels the difference between angels and humans and demons, through long and tedious empirical sampling. Once the angel-cloud had zipped to most corners of the city, it returned to Jimmy's tower and enveloped it. This time, though, instead of terrifying swirling light and frightening pops and cracks, the angel light tinkled like a morning mist, cool and enveloping. The faint sound of fire whooshed away from Ben's ears and the soot began to clear from the sky.

Ben looked over the city and saw a light turn on in a far-off window.

Then another.

Then another.

Then a floor and a side and an entire block.

They were bleeding together, light streaming between points and--yes--up! Light was streaming up from towers in the city and--yes!--up from Jimmy's tower as well. Ben's seat in the car stayed dark, but the night around him began to fill with light pouring into the sky. Ben watched a tower crumble as its constituent souls soared into the night sky. Then another. Then another.

It was beautiful and right until his own tower began to sway and sink. The car listed to the side, then steeply to the back. Ben gripped the arm-rest and the dashboard with his fingernails, but his head was driven into the ceiling as the car jerked and began to fall in earnest 

Down and down and down in freefall. Ben screamed and prayed and nothing happened. A moment filled him and he forced himself to picture Jimmy's face and apologize and say the few words he could manage. The last thing Ben remembered seeing was a familiar ball of light wrapping itself around the body of the car and yanking it to a stop in mid-air. Ben blacked out 

\-- 

Ben awoke on the edge of the sea, with tentacles of sea weed wrapping themselves around his legs. He heard crunching and craned his neck up to see a white-faced Jimmy sprinting across the sand to him, shirt whipping to his sides and face a mask of terrible hope and fear. He closed his eyes, and burned into the backs of them, he knew he would tell Jimmy he could see two men, foreheads pressed tother. One was Castiel, wearing his trench coat again and a look of completely unfamiliar bliss and the other in a black leather jacket with scuffed boots and his arms around Castiel. _Dean_ , Ben thought. Dean's face was worn and ragged and so peaceful as he pressed a kiss into the angel's mouth.

Ben will tell Jimmy about all of this, but first he rolls himself up to his knees and extends his hand, ready to be pulled up into Jimmy's arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I named my two OCs the names of characters in the show, but that's what they asked to be named in my head and I hope it isn't too confusing. Let me know if it was.


End file.
